The IBM Open Systems Adapter (OSA) is a hardware element that interlaces between an IBM S/390 or zSeries processor and a network, which may be a private network within an enterprise, a public network, or a combination of both. References that describe the Open Systems Adapter include the following patents, patent applications and publications, incorporated herein by reference: U.S. Pat. No. 6,772,221, Ratcliffet al., “Dynamically configuring and monitoring hosts connected in a computing network having a gateway device”; U.S. Pat. No. 6,600,743, Lee et al., “IP multicast interface”; U.S. Pat. No. 6,490,285, Lee et al., “IP multicast interface” [0008] U.S. Pat. No. 6,389,027, Lee et al., “IP multicast interface”; U.S. Pat. No. 6,327,621. Lee et al., “Method for shared multicast interface in a multi-partition environment”; U.S. Pat. No. 6,185,218, Ratcliffet al., “Communication method and apparatus for use in a computing network environment having high performance LAN connections”; and U.S. Pat. No. 6,084,859, Ratcliffet at, “internet Protocol assists using multi-path channel protocol”.
In many communications error scenarios associated with server and network communications, it is not always clear if the source of the problem is a software (e.g. Operating Systems) or hardware (e.g. network adapter) error. Often the external symptoms of the problem may not reveal the root source of the problem. When this occurs, both software and hardware documentation (traces and dumps) must be collected. This process is often referred to as “Problem Determination”, Problem determination is the process of isolating the source of the problem to a specific product (most often hardware vs. software).
Although each product (software and hardware) has tools that provide data collection, what is missing is the ability to trace both hardware and software level packet information at the same time for the same instance of an error. This deficiency causes many problems recreating attempts and in some field situations can lead to customer satisfaction issues.
Some Operating Systems have a set of tools that allows a trace to be set to capture network traffic or network events as seen by the host OS. However, the processing that occurs to the network traffic at the remote hardware adapter level is not seen by the host OS. At the hardware adapter level packets can be altered (such as fragmented, translated, or even dropped). Today network adapter traces must be manually controlled (started and stopped) by remote hardware tools. Often the tools are third party vendor tools which cannot see inside the adapter.
What is needed is the ability to capture all hardware trace activity and integrate the software and hardware trace collection process together with a single set of tools.